I'm totally cool with Times New Roman in most contexts. It's functional and readable; for large chunks of text you really can't deviate much from those basic designs without sacrificing those things.
Reviews:
Sans-serif fonts really aren't that exciting to me, so I don't really like any of them. But here goes:
Arial is the winner in my book, though I wish it were a little taller, like Helvetica. Calibri is actually not bad, despite my objections to Microsoft making it the new default.* Comic Sansis obnoxious. Futura is also fine, but a little heavy. Gil Sans is okay, but a little squished together. Helvetica looks pretty good, but I gag every time I see the capital R.** Lucida Grande is too big and spacious. Optima is a little wide and not as readable as the others.
There weren't as many serif fonts mentioned:
Baskerville is too light and has more pronounced serifs, making it more difficult to read.*** Goudy Old Style is also too light, but avoids having too-large serifs. Times New Roman is the winner in my book as it's much more readable than the other two.
When I've had to grade papers as a TA I find myself biased against students who use fonts drastically different from Arial or Times New Roman. It always sacrifices readability and when you have to read hundreds of papers, readability matters. I still graded them as fairly as I could, but man I hated them. I've also been in an anonymous writing competition where one of the other authors was indiscriminate in their use of fonts and their stories were a chore to read as a result. And though they dealt with serious subject matters, I couldn't help but think of them as silly stories because of their font choices. So unless you're making a cheesy flier, typesetting, or doing graphic design, Arial and Times New Roman are your best bets.
I'm actually quite fond of Californian FB, aside from the slanted hyphen. Book Antiqua is also easy on the eyes, and is wider than most other serif fonts, making it ideal for use in papers, heh. It's just like Verdana for the sans serifs--it automatically adds a few lines in length when you switch to it!
I used to be very partial to Arial, but I'm not a huge fan these days. I think the vast majority of sans serif fonts are inherently unprofessional compared to serifs. That being said, Calibri is actually a great font that I don't take issue with. I wouldn't print a paper with it, but I like using it when creating surveys and forms because it isn't intimidating and it's easy on the eyes.
Last semester I kept feeling like one of my professors was a total idiot. It took me a few weeks to realize that it probably had to do with all of his lecture slides being in Comic Sans.
I'm working on a new design for my blog/personal site, and I'm using Verdana. Works fine.
Helvetica and Times New Roman are abused because they're good.
I usually prefer Garamond or Georgia for my serifs, and I like Futura and Trebuchet for sans-serifs, but I use Myriad and Alternate Gothic for a lot of design projects. When I did design work for a real estate company, everybody had me use Trajan Pro. Blech.
Man...I never knew that so many people cared so much about fonts.
I mean, that's cool and all, I'm not trying to bash on anyone. More like I'm just posting something in an effort to get a little more involved in the message board...
Commander Keen wrote:Man...I never knew that so many people cared so much about fonts.
I mean, that's cool and all, I'm not trying to bash on anyone. More like I'm just posting something in an effort to get a little more involved in the message board...
I don't care about fonts. But I fully support you getting more involved with the message board.
I don't necessarily care about specific fonts, but I am very interested in fonts in general. It started with my first NaNo, which had a lot of stuff that was supposed to have been handwritten by five different people. I had a very fun time finding fonts that looked like how I think the character's handwriting would look like! I also love doing my novels in a different font in general, usually changing from one to another.
Though now that I think about it, I am very fond of Monotype Corsiva.
The Epistler was quite honestly knocked on her ethereal behind by the sheer logic of this.
I took two calligraphy classes at BYU (which I highly recommend, btw), so I certainly pay more attention to fonts and the artistic element of the words in my life. But I can't say I have spent as much time with it as I would like to. My pet peeve is when my computer just comes with the basic ones, because then I end up searching for cooler fonts to download online. But having said that, most of my assignments and dumb stuff would just be the default Times. I only care when I know people are going to see it for a while.
No matter how much it is over done, somehow I can't shake the papyrus addiction . . .
I can't pick a favorite (I don't feel like I've really looked into them enough yet), but I do love Garamond. Of the "web-safe" fonts, my favorite sans-serif would be Verdana.
The Hobbes and Marzipan Borg thread was getting full, so I thought I'd post this here since it's (somewhat) appropriate. I enjoyed the assimilation, the Borg-ified names, and the blog. The only thing that got on my nerves was their choice of font. Courier is just garish and difficult to read. It's hard on the eyes. I skipped over any answers that were in Courier unless I really wanted to know the answer. Don't get me wrong—I get the symbolism of it; but it did have the unintended side effect of being painstaking to read.
We chose it because we needed a monospaced font for effect and we needed it to be compatible with everyone's computers. Courier New was literally the only font that fit the bill--except for possibly Wingdings which I think is also monospaced. But there would be other inherent issues if we'd chosen Wingdings, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Courier is actually very readable if you get used to it.
In the film industry, if a screenplay is not in Courier (or if anything about the formatting is slightly off), it's considered absolutely unreadable. It's too off-putting.
